1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to providing information from a first device to a second device. More particularly, this invention relates to a micro-server system comprising a micro-server capable of being embedded into and/or associated with industrial equipment and/or consumer devices/products and capable of publishing information about such equipment and/or devices/products to thin clients running standard web browser software.
2. Statement of Related Art
Industrial process information is typically collected and used primarily through the offerings of a handful of key industrial information collection companies, or through internal home-brew solutions. Both approaches are costly to implement because the collecting architecture is very specific to the individual devices and to the whole process. Almost all the transport protocols are proprietary, and much of the media used to interconnect these devices, like RS-485, DeviceNet, and the like, are either proprietary or are limited to connecting only these kinds of devices. For a very remotely located device, options for connection can be severely limited.
In addition, most prior art solutions are hard-wired to the process, and a central host collects and manages device data, as is shown in FIG. 1. A central host is not a natural place for this information. The data is more timely, accurate, and meaningful at the device to which the data pertains.
Should the process change, re-wiring or re-instrumenting of prior art systems is typically needed. Re-programming the host is an enormous task fraught with the potential for bringing the whole process to a halt. The proprietary software that communicates with the host is usually licensed for, and installed on, each client computer, representing a big investment even from the update management perspective alone.
A significant drawback of such prior art systems is that if the host fails or is unreachable for any reason, all tactical and strategic data becomes unavailable.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to simultaneously remove the host computer, as shown in FIG. 2 in which micro-server is abbreviated .mu.Server, remove the need for customer programming, unify the network fabric throughout factories and offices (Ethernet), provide secure access to any effector or device in the process from any workstation in the enterprise, and reduce the total cost of ownership.
It is an additional object of this invention to prevent information about a device from being maintained on a centralized host computer and to allow such information to reside in the actual device itself. With the information residing in the device itself, if the device is moved, its data moves with it. If the device is replaced, the new device can automatically publish its new data according to the principles of this invention.
It is a further object of this invention to enable devices to come on line and be browsable by a browser when the devices are shipped from the OEM. According to the principles of this invention, such devices could be capable of providing operational data, limits, suggested maintenance cycles, specifications, links to the manufacturer's web site for detailed drawings, and literally whatever other information that the OEM desires.
Typically, original equipment manufacturer ("OEM")software professionals do not program with the Windows Application Programming Interface ("API"), and therefore almost never write code for a network. Typically, however, they are very familiar with the embedded software necessary to monitor and control industrial devices.
It is therefore a further object of this invention to abstract and encapsulate the highly complex TCP/IP network layer and Internet Web services to provide a simple, yet comprehensive, API in the "embedded" problem space, with which most OEM software professionals are familiar. It is a further object of this invention to publish information about the industrial equipment, also referred to as the device data, to an enterprise or the world as a web page on the corporate Intranet or the larger Internet.